When you add data about your products to Merchant Center, a data source is created. You can use a single or multiple data sources to add your data. You can use the same or different upload methods for each of your data sources.
On this page
- How to find the Data sources tab
- Understanding what’s on the Data sources tab
- Automatically added products
- Remove a product data source or data source label
- Download a product file issue report in the Latest update tab
How to find the Data sources tab
There are 2 ways to navigate to the Data sources tab:
Option 1: Select Data sources under the settings and tools icon in the top right of Merchant Center.
Option 2: Select Products from the left navigation menu, then click the View data sources link on the “All products” tab.
Understanding what’s on the Data sources tab
The “Source” column shows the upload method that was used for each data source. Learn more about How to upload your products to Merchant Center.
The “Update” button allows you to manually trigger a refresh of the products in a particular data source.
If a product is uploaded multiple times through different data sources, then the product will be considered part of the data source that was most recently updated.
Example
- Timestamp 1
- Products A and B are uploaded via the spreadsheet based data source X.
- As the most recent updates of products A and B are via data source X, both products are considered as part of data source X.
- Timestamp 2
- Product A is included in the upload of spreadsheet based data source, data source Y.
- As the most recent update of product A is via data source Y, product A is now considered part of data source Y.
- Timestamp 3
- Products A and B are removed from the data source X spreadsheet.
- Timestamp 4
- Data source X is refreshed.
- Product B is deleted from Merchant Center as it is no longer present in the latest upload of the owning data source, data source X.
- However, product A remains in Merchant Center as it is owned by data source Y.
Automatically added products
You can add products automatically from your online store to Merchant Center by using structured data to add your product information on your online store and letting Google collect this information. If you make any changes to your online store, such as changing your product prices or removing a product, the changes are also automatically reflected on Google.
You can also control the product data that is automatically added to Merchant Center. You can remove certain automatically added products or remove all automatically added products by deleting the relevant data source.
Learn more about adding products automatically from your online store.
Remove a product data source or data source label
Product data that has been removed or deleted from your Merchant Center account may take up to an hour to reflect in your ads and free listings. If you have enabled a scheduled fetch for the deleted product data source, the fetch will not take place until the product data source is recreated.
Remove a product data source
In your Merchant Center account, click on the Settings & tools icon
in the top right.
Click Data sources.
On the “Product sources” tab, select the product data source that you want to remove.
Click the 3 dot menu icon
Click Delete source.
On the pop-up that appears, click Remove.
The items in this data source will not be available for Shopping anymore.
If you’re replacing an old product data source with a new product data source that contains similar product data, the new product data source should be uploaded before you remove the old product data source. This allows the item IDs and associated history to transfer to the new product data source.
To delete a specific product from your product data in your Merchant Center account, navigate to Products in the left navigation menu. In the “All products” tab, click on the specific product title, and then click Delete product in the lower right-hand corner of the "Product details" page.
Data source labels
Previously product data sources could have multiple labels and language combinations (“data-targets”). Now, a product data source will only be able to have a single data target. Product data sources that have multiple combinations of a data source label and language will now be regrouped into product data sources that each have only one combination of data source label - language data target.
A data source label can only be removed by deleting and recreating the product data source.
Download a product file issue report in the Latest update tab
At the bottom of the "Latest update" tab, you can find the "Your product file" section. This section contains the "What needs attention" column, which lists all issues that affect your product file.
In the “Your product file” section, you can also find the "Download report" button. You can use this button to download a report that provides you with more details about the issues listed in the "What needs attention" column. The report also lists the line numbers of products affected by the issues.
Download a report file
In your Merchant Center account, click on the Settings & tools icon
in the top right.
Select Data sources.
On the “Product sources” tab, under “Primary sources”, select a name of a product data source. The “Latest update” tab will appear.
In the “Your product file” section, view the “What needs attention” column to learn which issues affect your product file.
- Note that if your product file doesn’t have issues, you can find a “No issues found” note in this section instead.
Click the Download report button
